*Image: “Laid Bare” by Monica Stewart, approx. 60” x 48” Oil on canvas, 2012
Tyler Friend
Featured Poet
Some New Ways of Making Love
You, holding a corpse pose.
Me, carefully eating a peach,
but cracking a tooth on the pit
anyway. You, riding a bicycle
around midnight. You, not
wearing your glasses. You,
saying, Fuck the Police. Me,
saying, Fuck the Patriarchy.
Me, driving with the windows
down and the heat cranked
up. You, unhurriedly undressing
before a bath. You, hanging
your bras out to dry. You, looking
just the way you look.
On a Honeyed Moon
The pan | or | ama: a crea | my cottage, nesting between honeysuckle and beebalm: | aromatic (not aromantic): a romantic land | scape, rosy. Brick floors atop small-town soil | unsoiled | and antique windows: sepia, a seeping glow, sneaking around ivy. Alabaster bedding and raspberry | rusting: serene, serendipito | us. O | pen shutters and unlocked doors, love shudders. Macro: softening already s | oft folds: a botanical belly, borderless. Thick thighs and growing fo | rests: mountaino | us and contrapposto, mar | bled, mirrored in crying eyes. Low light | push-processed. Cat | hedrals, caverno | us yawns, braids, and high- | waist shorts, film canister | s in breast pockets. Mode | led, molded: cut legs (igno | red, kissed) and thigh-highs. Becoming a candle, crad | led, red, and lit. Weeded and wined (wound) ((round)), out of focus. Developing | in darkened dorm room close | ts (pretty gay). Fair | y-pink flower hats, held | to | get | her with bobby pins, paired (syr | uped, peared), for | aged from the yard. Wine-fil | led teacups floating in the bathtub, songs about crying in grocery stores, slo | wed, steeping dark choco | late heart rot, budding: harmonio | us. Trans | lucent. Lavender and apricot pit nectar. | Plum panning, morning glory | sighs sugaring me.
Some New Ways of Making Love II
You, giving me
your old bras. Me,
sticking my nose between
your breasts when it’s cold. You,
peeling an apple in one long spiral. You,
looking up at the moon and getting all turned
on. Me, making the Vulcan salute and you
putting your tongue between my fingers.
You, floating on a jalapeño
in a pool of cheese dip.
Me, rolling you up
like a burrito.
